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Review of effects of radiation damage on the luminescence emission of minerals, and the example of He-irradiated CePO4

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Abstract

The accumulation of structural damage that is created in minerals upon corpuscular irradiation, has two apparently contrarious effects on their luminescence behaviour. First, irradiation may cause the generation of luminescent defect centres, which typically results in broad-band emissions. Such defect emissions are characteristic of low levels of radiation damage. Second, radiation damage depletes in general the luminescence of minerals, which is associated with broadenings and intensity losses of individual emission lines. Minerals that have suffered elevated levels of irradiation hence tend to be virtually non-luminescent. This review paper aims at giving an overview of the possible correlations of radiation damage and emission characteristics of minerals. After a brief, introductory summary of the damage-accumulation process and its causal corpuscular radiation, an array of examples is presented for how internal and/or external irradiation may change appreciably the emission of rock-forming and accessory minerals. As a detailed example for the complexity of changes of emissions upon damage accumulation, preliminary results of a case study of the photoluminescence (PL) of synthetic CePO4 irradiated with 8.8 MeV He ions are presented. Irradiation-induced spectral changes include (i) the initial creation, and subsequent depletion, of a broad-band, defect-related PL emission of orange colour, and (ii) gradual broadenings and intensity losses of PL lines related to electronic transitions of rare-earth elements, eventually leading to gradual loss of their splitting into multiple Stark levels (shown for the 4F3/2 → 4I9/2 transition of Nd3+).

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Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to D.W. Davis, J. Götze, J.M. Hanchar, J.W. Harris, A. Kronz, A. Massanek, A. Möller, I.V. Pekov, H.-P. Schertl, and C. Schnier for providing samples, spectra, and images; and to K. Trachenko for the permission to publish Fig. 2. Sample preparation was done by A. Wagner. We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. Financial support was provided by the European Commission through Research Infrastructures Transnational Access (RITA) grant no. 025646, and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), grants P20028–N10 and P24448–N19.

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  1. Institut für Mineralogie und Kristallographie, Universität Wien, Althanstr. 14, 1090, Wien, Austria

    Lutz Nasdala & Katja Ruschel

  2. Institut für Ionenstrahlphysik und Materialforschung, Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden, P.O. Box 510119, 01314, Dresden, Germany

    Dieter Grambole

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Correspondence to Lutz Nasdala.

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Nasdala, L., Grambole, D. & Ruschel, K. Review of effects of radiation damage on the luminescence emission of minerals, and the example of He-irradiated CePO4 . Miner Petrol 107, 441–454 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00710-013-0274-6

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